First, digitized music is now virtually
worthless. Prof. Peter Tschmuck, a professor at
the University of Music and Performing Arts in Vienna
who runs a
blog about the economics of the music business, told me the
return on investment from selling a digital copy of a song is 12%
compared with about 36% for CDs — and that's before that revenue
is carved up to various title holders.

Professor Jeff Dorenfeld, Professor of Music
Business/Management at the Berklee College of Music, told us
songs have been losing value for more than a decade.

There's very little money made from recorded music anymore. Apple
— iTunes is mostly a singles market, Spotify, that kind of
service doesn't pay high royalties, radio is not as big as it
used to be. So all those revenues are not where they were, and
haven't been for the last 15 years.

When asked recently by the Guardian's Casper Llewellyn Smith
about whether he regrets bassist's Bill Wyman leaving the band in
1993,
Charlie Watts cracked,"I think he missed out on a very
lucrative period in our existence."

The band in
Anaheim.REUTERS/Mike
Blake

Money is money, Dorenfeld says, noting that bands as big as the
Stones command supremely high margins on splits with concert
promoters and bookers because of the guaranteed interest they
draw.

They're getting more than 60% is my guess (of a show's gross
revenues). If the show made $3 million, that's $1.8 million, not
counting merch — you walk away with that also. They're unique —
all the ones like them are unique — the deals are much
tighter because the revenue from everything else is much greater.

An additional consideration — perhaps not for the band, but for
anyone who would think the Stones are wasting everyone's time and
perhaps risking ridicule — is that while the band is just the
four current members, "Rolling Stones, Inc." likely
employs more than a dozen people full time and hundreds
while on the road. The band in its salad
days.Youtube

Setting up stages, even for arena tours like the current one, are
massive operations that Dorenfeld says can cost hundreds of
thousands of dollars a night. "They're a major corporation on the
road — they're a company," he says. "They do pay well, many have
benefits and healthcare."

The biggest responsibility out of all this is the fact that you
employ a lot of people and you are responsible for them,
responsible for making sure they're taken care of. People's
livelihoods are depending on you. I don't like that
responsibility too much, but that comes with the territory.

Of course, one does not go on tour merely to keep your entourage
happy. But it's part of the equation.

Everyone had a really good time in the five shows before
Christmas (in London, New Jersey and New York). We wanted to see
how the band was playing, how people were reacting. We
didn’t get too much moaning or complaining.

Given all of the above, that seems to be a fairly low hurdle to
surmount.